A view from the courtyard of Habitat ’67, the affordable housing complex in Montreal designed by Moshe Safdie. Photo: Timothy Hursley

For many people, Moshe Safdie’s name is forever linked with Montreal, the city in which the architect’s radical experiment in affordable housing, Habitat ’67, was constructed for the 1967 World’s Fair. Yet it’s Los Angeles that is currently hosting the fascinating exhibition “Global Citizen: The Architecture of Moshe Safdie,” which provides a detailed look at the career of one of the more intriguing and enigmatic figures on the contemporary architecture scene.

The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. Photo: Timothy Hursley

The exhibition at the Skirball Cultural Center gives the landmark Habitat project the attention it deserves, through a series of drawings, concept studies, and extraordinary models of the complex as it was originally designed—integrating residential, commercial, and institutional facilities—and the far more modest development that was actually built. One of the highlights of the show is a restored prefab laundry and bathroom unit of fiberglass-reinforced plastic that was constructed by Frigidaire specifically for Habitat.

From there, exhibition curator Donald Albrecht leads visitors through a half-century of Safdie’s output, showcasing projects both unbuilt (notably schemes for Habitat developments in New York City, Puerto Rico, and Israel) and fully realized (the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, and the Skirball Center itself, to name a few).

The Khalsa Heritage Centre in Anandpur Sahib, India, as seen from the water gardens.
Photo: Ram Rahman

“Global Citizen” also spotlights Safdie’s expanding presence across Asia, including sections on the mega-scale Marina Bay Sands project, a 10-million-square-foot development on the Singapore waterfront; a competition submission for the National Art Museum of China in Beijing; and the Khalsa Heritage Centre in Anandpur Sahib, India, built in 2011.

The show is generously installed in Safdie’s light-filled galleries at the Skirball, allowing visitors the chance to appreciate and reassess the full scope of the architect’s singular career and his profoundly humanistic approach to design. It’s well worth the effort to brave the traffic on the Kafkaesque 405 Freeway.

Through March 2, 2014, at the Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles; skirball.org